I am assuming you just read about my camping trip. In the middle of all of that I found a coaching moment with a friend.
James is retiring in a couple months and still wants to do something to make a little money afterward. He saw his options as working part time at the hospital from which he is retiring or maybe finding a different part time job.
Knowing James for a while now and being me I started asking some questions. I asked him first why he doesn’t think about just doing something on his own. He won’t be in a position where he “has” to make the additional income and I would hate to see him retired but still having those commitments and stress, that’s not retirement.
James started immediately giving me all of the reasons that he thought he couldn’t go into business for himself. He doesn’t have the needed training, education, experience, etc., he doesn’t want to put out the big investment and more.
I wouldn’t let it go though and kept asking questions and continued to push him to explore ideas of what he would do. Again, I know James and I was trying to get him to think of this on his own but I finally had to ask him, “what about being a photographer”.
When James isn’t working he is at the beach, in the mountains and going somewhere he hasn’t been and he is constantly taking pictures of all of his adventures. Some of his pictures are amazing.
Anyway, James’ response to my question, “that’s sounds great but I don’t have the right equipment, skills, blah blah blah blah”. I then started showing James some people I followed on line who were successful sharing their pictures on line, I showed James the websites to a couple photographers I know who were very successful in their photography businesses and after looking at all of them and many of the pictures they were sharing I ask him if there was any reason he couldn’t take pictures like theirs.
Boom! I think I got him really excited about this now. He and I are going to talk this week and I hope he is still as energetic about it then, as he was when we parted yesterday. I would love to see him spending all of his time doing what he loves, sharing it with others and profiting from it as well.
You can take a lot from this but the main thing I was looking to address is to first, look for ways you can do it instead of ways you can’t, secondly is to find more and more people or places in which you share your thoughts. You never know when, where or from who you might just find the answers and solutions.
What did you take from this?